Surgical clips are already known, made of pre-shaped sheet metal which are placed one by one with the aid of a sort of tweezers and which present the drawbacks of not being very sharp, of being cumbersome and consequently of not being suitable for use in a stapler. On the other hand, one of their advantages is constituted by a stop on the point which limits penetration thereof.
Furthermore, other pre-shaped surgical clips are known, made of metal wire, which are used with a sterile, generally disposable stapler. Such clips, sharper and less cumbersome than the clips in pre-shaped sheet metal, close approximately in the form of a ring in the manner of a suture yarn knotted in conventional manner. Consequently, they present the drawback of exerting pressure only at the point of penetration of their point without taking into account the anisotropy constituted by the presence of the sides of a wound. However, a mode of suture employing yarn is known, practised in cosmetic surgery, called Blair-Donati suture, which is effected by disposing the fastening knot on one side only of the wound, therefore requiring that the yarn enters and leaves by the same side, which produces four traces of penetration of the yarn around the wound. This type of suture distributes the pressure exerted so that the deep layers of the skin receive a pressure which is equal to or greater than that of the surface layers. The normal tension of the skin does not move these deep layers apart and healing takes place both in depth and on the surface, with the result that, when the stitches are removed, the deep layers serve as hinge and the surface layers, in that case slightly in compression, continue to heal under better conditions.
It is an object of the present invention to overcome these drawbacks of known surgical clips by providing a clip whose shape is designed so as to limit the penetration of its points, thus avoiding forming a ring, and ensuring at the same time a better distribution of the pressure on the different cutaneous and sub-cutaneous layers between the points of the clip and its web.